The Adventurer's Journal Cancelled

Hi Pangaeans!

No, your website is working fine. The Adventurer's Journal is on permanent cancellation and was removed from the site at the request of Square-Enix's legal team. It's disheartening to see all that work go down the toilet, but the last thing I want to do is make waves with one of my favorite game companies.

Before you get angry at them (or maybe it's too late for you hot-blooded types), they were real cool about it. I got the standard cease-and-desist and then reached out to the team about it asking for details. A representative not only said they liked I was supportive and found my style of writing from an avatar's position fun and engaging, they felt I had taken too many liberties with the actual characters in the game and their cut-scenes. It was a gray area, but they concluded it infringed upon their intellectual property and felt I was using them without permission. I had also asked if this was a case of plagiarism, out of fear of what a friend said. They confirmed it wasn't since my site made it clear I held no ownership and I was speaking from an empty character's point of view using my own creation. Can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that.

The whole point of it was for gamers who never played Final Fantasy XI, or even heard of it, to enjoy the story it provided. Alas, I'm already seeing a dive in viewers on my website after I posted the initial news. Can't avoid that. Oh well. So from here on, my focus is solely on the game and it's development, so maybe it's for the best.

Finals are also over, but now I need to prep for doing my secondary job of Lyft again.